Friday, October 16, 2009

Although I love the red, I know that I would be bored to tears knitting miles of it, and this shawl is BIG. And it seemed to me that Something Wicked needed Something Black...the most wicked of colors. I begin a thought process.......

......Time passes. Aliens come and go in the back yard. Harry assassinates karaoke from Albania to Zanzibar. The RIAA sends Al Jolsen a copyright infringement notice. The FDA issues a recall notice on water (too much water will cause people to explode and that's not acceptable). Blue Cross/Blue Shield announces that having been born is a now considered a pre-existing condition and will no longer cover any illness or injury for any claimant who has undergone this process........

.......I think about knitting the edging in black. Nah. Too abrupt. Then I think about dip-dying it. Nah. Too chancy. Then I think about spinning the yarn and new possibilities present themselves. I finally emailed Anna at Corgi Hill Farm, sent her a picture of the shawl, and explained what I was looking to do. She's brilliant, folks. She carefully dyed a graduated series of silk/merino batts for me that will, after I spin it all up, give me a nice flow from Wicked Red to Wicked Black.

I have about 7 ounces of batt, and need about 2200 yards of two-ply, which works out to 314x2=628 yards per ounce. And that, after consulting various tables, is about 80 WPI. Doable, but it's going to take some time.

So the only Wickedness you're going to see around here for a while is Harry. Apparently, he had a nice gig at the Two Tables Restaurant in Zanzibar City. Unfortunately, a two-table audience was way too small for his ego, so he's taken some time off to kayak the Zambesi river. The guides discovered on his first day that Harry's rendition of Moon River caused crocodiles, algae, and hippos to flee from the river at Mach 2. The tour company is trying to sign him to a long-term contract. I personally wrote him a stellar letter of recommendation.

Oh...it's going to be a wicked shawl. Great idea.Your math had me scratching my head for a while. At first I thought the odd numbers you got had something to do with that weird measuring system people use around here. Funny how different people face the same problem - first thing I did was multiply the yardage by the number of plies :P

It's actually a good thing that this project will take long time, as it will give me, as a reader of this blog, the pleasure of enjoying your adventures with this wickedness for a very loooooooong time:) and that time will be well spent:)

I've been thinking a lot about what to do with the kid silk yarn that I won. In the end it felt like I had 3 to chose between: dianna (an entrelac project), a scarf with crocheted squares in different colours that are croched together, and a revised version of the forest path stole. I did start knitting the forest path stole a few years ago, but in the end the very thought of entrelac and lace seemed so intimidating that it everntually turned into an UFO, that has been resting in my knitting bag a few years by now. Knitting it in kid silk and in several colours seems less intimidating for some reasons:)

currently I'm experimenting dying on another yarn that I bought. When I bought it, it had a terrible brick red colour, now I've been trying different dyes on small amounts of the yarn, but so far I'm not happy with the result. It will most likely end up as either a darkpeach or a very soft orange. But I must say that it is really interesting how colours change depending on how one mix the basic colours in the dye:)

Or maybe I just copy your idea and dye it in a subsequent colourscheme:)

Oh that is going to be gorgeous. I have that pattern, and I just got some fiber from Anna, but only in one color, called True Blood. I'm glad you posted this. If I ever get it spun up properly, it would make a terrific shawl.